@rshankle- The difficulty with designs for an old device is not only part availability but ongoing support. It seem the old devices end up needed you to use the old tools which can be a problem if something doesn't work.

@78RPM- Interesting application. As to appropriate radios I think bandwidth and distance are the key elements. I have found that Microchip has a good range of solutions. Check them out if you have a chance.

@gordonmx, To find the frequency component of a vibration, yo have to do a Fast Fourier Transform. You will need a good 32-bit arithmetic unit and maybe a built-in signal processor. an MCU will require a lot of programming on your part. Better to get a signal processor on your device (not sure what device that might be).

Design 5 is a good example. A future class, or version of this class, digging deeper into determining when FPGA is a better solution would be nice: hardware cost, measuring performance bottlenecks, etc. Some MCUs are now including programmable state machines and complex timer logic that could solve a problem instead of a whole FPGA. Discussion on how to debug and test FPGA implementations would be nice, too.

@78RPM- Good point on medical devices. There is a difference between life support (like a pacemaker) and diagnostics equipment (blood pressure measurement). You need to look at the vendors infrmation to determine which they are applicable for.

@gordonmx- Finding the frequency component of the vibration could possibly be done with an MCU. Vibration is hopefully low frequency and I think an MCU could do it fine. If not, an external FPGA or an SoC FPGA could be a good target.

A step-by-step tutorial on how to get specific processors up and running would be useful. I realize there are almost an infinite number of options, but maybe a couple examples from each of the top few manufacturers would be useful. All the way from selecting the processor through to getting code running on the chip in an embedded application would be useful.

I prefer EDN and other articles, also white papers are good. In the past week I watched a horible webinar (Infineon IGBJT ) and a superb 2 hour webinar on hi speed PCB design by freescale. So it depends...

Biggest challenge is getting documentation which has a complete and accurate description of the product. For example the SmartFusion2 board has a SFP connector which is not included in the product description. It can be optical or electrical SFP.

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A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. quietly announced that it was rolling out a new wrinkle to the powerful safety feature called stability control, adding even more lifesaving potential to a technology that has already been very successful.

It won't be too much longer and hardware design, as we used to know it, will be remembered alongside the slide rule and the Karnaugh map. You will need to move beyond those familiar bits and bytes into the new world of software centric design.

People who want to take advantage of solar energy in their homes no longer need to install a bolt-on solar-panel system atop their houses -- they can integrate solar-energy-harvesting shingles directing into an existing or new roof instead.

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